This thread will reflect my experience and progress in eating raw.

Pls. excuse my English - foreigner.

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Medicine, Food Industry and Commerce are businesses.
Is their goal to make/keep me healthy or to make more profit?
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coolness

Yes, yes, yes - not a diet, but a lifestyle! I look forward to reading your posts.

The fact that I cannot Edit and Delete my own postings will affect negatively the quality of my postings.

My trial of sharing is a work in progress and my inspiration level is not the same every time.
There is a challenge of expressing myself in English and I will try to not disappoint the (English native) forum members.

At this time, I have the feeling that running my own web site will be a better solution, but I will have to learn how to build my own web site and I do not have much time for this.

DISCLAIMER:
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I just cannot express exactly what I feel about the benefits of eating /living healthy, and give ANY advice, since I AM NOT doctor or therapist and I do not want to be sued for my beliefs.

I will try to make everything to sound like: "this worked for me", "that was good for me", "I did this/that", " I believe that...".

If I will ever give an advice to someone, this will be a mistake and pls. ignore that post (since I cannot delete/edit my own posts once posted).

(I hope you got the idea and you can tell that I am honest in what I want to do)

I want to share my story because I had excellent results (much more over what I expected and I feel great and doing well). I'm still learning and researching. I want to eat even healthier, but it is hard to find healthy food and some are very expensive too.
I am not saying that I eat healthy, I eat healthier than I used to, and I will improve my lifestyle in time as much as I will can.

To be continued...

Pls. excuse my English - foreigner.

=============================================================
Medicine, Food Industry and Commerce are businesses.
Is their goal to make/keep me healthy or to make more profit?
=============================================================

Seems as though your English is a lot better than 99.999% of "native" English-speakers who post on the Internet. It's excellent, and I look forward to your journal.

dont worry about the edit/delete thing just post what you feel

if you went away to your own website then we wouldnt see you would we?!

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

An easy free site is eshire.net I have my childcare business there, and it's easy to build and get started. You can take a look at mine if you want. [www.apronstrings.eshire.net]

You are welcome here, no matter the spelling..we all have keyboards that make errors Ok, so I can't type sometimes..hahahahaha..

Love,
Prism

yeah erik's english is terrific

i thought he was joking about his english not being good

its a LOT better than MINE

get back here and post your adventures

Intro:
Romanian male (white), 42, about 6” tall, moved in US in 2001
My maximum weight was 264 lb – at the middle of 2oo1.
Present weight: 190 lb.
I do not smoke, drink or doing any drugs.
This year I had only a cup of champagne at my step-son's wedding.

While I was self-employed working to much (7 days/week, over 12-16 hrs/day) I had a breakdown overworking.
Seeking more physical resources, I fed myself in excess, trying to compensate the effort I was making and also to prevent future health problems.

Overweighted, I started to have knee pain and discomfort even standing or walking few steps.
I realized that continuing to eat that way, soon I will not be able to have a job and take care of myself.

Examples of what and how much I used to eat:
1 Jar / day of peanut butter (sandwiches of 5 slices of bread (white) each),
8 pieces of chicken at once, 4-6 pork steaks at once, Snickers in every day, hardly no vegetables or soups, only few fruits – the coated and sprayed kind, plenty of soda (up to 1 gal./day).

Moved from Europe, I was surprised (and still I am) about two things (here in US):

a) the amount of sweetener/sugar added in everything, especially in soda (pop) and cakes/bakery products,

b) the corn syrup is added in virtually every canned food, even in the “Arizona Tea” or similar.


I used to dilute the soda with water: ¾ soda - ¼ (or more) water, then I got used with the sweetness.
I tried almost every kind of soda I found on market and I believe I started to be addicted to coffee (I used to drink 1-2 qt. of coffee/day) AND the second addiction was for Cream Soda – I drunk an average of 1 gal./day (Regular, then Diet Soda).

I realized that I am dependent/addicted and I have an overweight problem.

Trying to diet (starving myself and dehydrating myself very often) I noticed that the most dangerous enemy is the sweet: natural and artificial sugar/sweetener.
After starving myself weeks and losing only few pounds was enough to start eating sweet couple of times and the weight I just lost was coming back with some extra.

Solution:

I stopped eating sweet and food containing white flour – any kind of bread, pasta.

I “discovered” then the Chinese cuisine with their stir-frying technique and steaming, blanching, etc., bought books about Asian Cuisine and I was the permanent client of my closest Chinese Restaurants.
Was good, cheap, I could “reload” my plate how many times I wanted, but I was eating once a day, since I work 50 to over 60 hours/wk + the commuting time of about 2 hours / day.

I lost some weight in couple of years, but I could not go under 230 without to have serious weakness.

Due to my temper (I am not patient) and perhaps because of my military service, I used to eat extremely fast ( I can take my lunch in about 10 minutes and under).

I never took a good care of my teeth and now I only have a few molars left after lots of extractions, so I have no technical way to masticate correctly. After couple of visits to the American dentists, (you all know the prices in health care/dental field - here in US) their evaluation to fix all my dental problems was over $17,000 (not including any tooth implant – about $2,500 - $3,500 / each). They even wanted to extract some of my good teeth I have left!
No way to afford to fix my teeth here – but I can do it for 10% -30% from the US estimation if I go in Romania or in some European countries. An extraction cost is $10-$15, implants are starting with $250 with the same titanium implants.

Due to all the above mentioned factors, I started to have major problems with my stomach and v. powerful acid reflux every day.
The majority of the food I ate was just transiting my body without to be digested.

Note:
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Pls. don't ask me where was I looking when I realized that! :-)

Analyzing my problems, I started to think that instead of eating “normally” I can help my stomach and improve the digestion process blending all the food I eat.

Starting my research on Internet, using search engines and key-words like: “food processor”, “blender”, “mixer”, “juicer”,
I found [rawfoodadvantage.com] (1-800-578-6988) and I placed my order for an Vita-Prep 3 (made by Vitamix ®) and I also accepted the suggestion of getting a kind of extra kit, with some DVD's and a vacuum pump and a screen. It was an expensive purchase, but I understood why I need a super-powerful blender (and I don't regret the purchase I made).

I got my Vita-Prep 3 blender on April 02 2007.
This was the starting point of my new adventure (I did not know at that time that I am going to “land” on the raw and vegetarians territory or under their “jurisdiction”).

At that time, I only had the goal of pureeing all my food -in order to help my stomach and improve my digestion.

The real gift was the set of 3 DVDs with a conference of Dr. Tom Wu (Nutritionist Doctor) explaining the reason of using a blender instead of eating traditional, and some other healthy things to do.

Dr. Tom Wu is a religious person (I am not much into religion) and he made many references to Bible and God – some people don't believe in that kind of stuff, but I took notes about his EVERY IDEA EXPRESSED THERE and I found everything having lots of common sense and I decided to try to see if will work for me too.

I wrote down what plants are good for what problems and I started to follow his recommendations, basically buying all the vegetables and fruits I could find at the same store (Wal-Mart) where I did my food shopping, not much organic food, but still some, still a step forward.
Dr. Wu (and his wife – also doctor) expressed himself in English the best way a Taiwanese could. Hard to follow, but I got his ideas. He combined ideas from Religion, Qi-Gong, Chinese/Asian Philosophy and Medicine, with lots of common sense, fine attention to details and of course, his experience from years of practice.

“Armed” with more information from Internet, I made a kind of common sense rules about what is good to do to keep yourself healthy and I started to re-learn how to eat (raw).

Not the idea of becoming 100% vegetarian or raw is my present goal, but to get healthier and to stay into a good shape.

Results after 4 months of raw ( + fish and shrimp):
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After about 4 months of raw vegetable and fruits – blended 90% of times, (I am still in transition – or “work in progress” the way I describe my advance), I replaced 100% the beef, chicken, pork with fish and shrimp. I don't eat the fish and shrimp raw – I'm afraid, but I grill the fish into a cast iron pan – and I don't use any ingredients or oil, or sodium. Just the fish fillets the way they are. I eat mostly tilapia, unfortunately is a farm raised fish, not caught wild and the same thing with the shrimp I could find – even worse, containing preservatives.

I added in my daily menu these ingredients: 1 lime/day (with rind), 1 garlic clove/day, 1 slice of ginger/day, about 3-6 tea spoons of flax seeds / day, 2 tea spoons of bee pollen/day and 1 pill of probiotics/day – on empty stomach, when I wake up, with a glass of water. I ate also almonds, cashews and Brazil Nuts. I ate avocado (with kernel) instead of something fat, whenever I had too much acid and no desire for fruits or veggies.

Basically, I made 2 kind of drinks: one mainly from vegetables – to replace the food, and one with fruits, to replace the soda or other liquids I used to drink.

I had problems balancing the acidity of my purees and I ate dry Sushi Nori sea weeds when I had too much
acidity in my stomach. Chewing licorice sticks (roots) helped me also with the heartburns.

I intend to buy a digital pH Meter to measure the pH of each raw fruit and vegetable, in the idea of making balanced purees with an close-to-neutral pH.

I lost about 35 pounds in about 3.5 months, without any exercises, only the activity from my work.

I am not saying that now I have a perfect health, but I noticed the following positive changes in my health:

1. My energy is boosted so much (enhanced sexuality too), I cannot sit during brakes, I walk, I have to move, I go back to work early from my brakes.

2. I am not tired no more (at work or at home), I am not like a zombie no more.

3. From this reason, I stopped drinking coffee – not because the coffee is extracting the calcium from bones – it is said, but because I do not need it no more.

4. I cannot sleep so much like before. Before I slept 9-11 hours (due to my very physical job and working midnights, over 50 hours/week – sometimes over 60 hours/week). After an average of 5, max. 6 hours of sleep, I wake up, I cannot even lay down on my bed, I have to move, to do something.

5. I do not have permanent muscular pain – like before (the same above mentioned reason), it's gone!

6. My hearing is better – I remember before – so many times, my colleagues told me: “your watch alarm is running
(ringing?)” - I only accidentally heard my wrist watch alarm if my arm was close to my head. This does not mean that the hearing loss is reversible – I don't think so. But I had permanent sinus problems and teeth infections, gingivitis. Now the level of infections decreased dramatically in my system.

7. My hemorrhoids don't bother me no more.

8. The deposit of tartar/plague on my teeth is almost inexistent – even when I don't brush my teeth 1-2 days or so. Compare this with the plaque you clean after you eat bread or sweet bakery products!!!

9. My skin is not so sensitive no more (I had some kind of mild allergic reactions to any object was touching my skin long time (safety gloves, wrist watch, boots, most of deodorants applied underarms caused major skin irritations.


I noticed (very surprised) that I have more energy when I eat vegetables and fruits, compared with the days when I eat mainly grilled fish and shrimp and also I feel that the raw beets are giving me wings (so much energy!).

All this time from April 02 till present, I never had any discomfort, head aches, diarrhea, or constipation and I was not sick – with two exception (motivated):

a) I ate a papaya WITH SEEDS, then I had the best and cheaper cleansing I ever tried – the papaya seeds have this effect strong germicide too!

b) I got red throat after I ate a bag with cooked shrimp straight from freezer, chewing them frozen – that was a stupid thing to do!

I could mention here that I forced myself once to eat dry black beans after I ground them in blender. Their taste is so strong, I cannot eat them, but I wanted to eat them and that taste was making me sick – but the stomach had no problems at all. The ground dry beans (raw) is the only kind of vegetable I cannot stand at present time. I eat them well fresh/green (raw Lima Beans are delicious)!

I don't know if I missed something now.

In my next post following this thread, I will continue with my “Common Sense Rules” guiding me toward a healthier life and I will share with you my progress in raw.


Questions, remarks – welcomed!

Will be continued...

Pls. excuse my English - foreigner.

=============================================================
Medicine, Food Industry and Commerce are businesses.
Is their goal to make/keep me healthy or to make more profit?
=============================================================

hey erik

u are doing fantastic

i'm glad you are continually reaping the benefits of your great adventure

welcome to

R
A
W


paradise

Fascinating stuff! You are doing great! Sounds like you have healed a lot of health problems.

where is erik?

cool posts he has

hey there wow what a journey you are on!! keep up the amazingness in life!! i look forward to many more wonderful stories from you!! take care!!
lots of love
earthangel
oxoxoxo

Much peace and love!!!
EarthAngel
Xoxo